SFD Blues

Now that the initial euphoria of the First Big Sale has worn off, I’ve been trying to get to work on the WIP. It hasn’t been easy. The WIP is in first draft, and first drafts are ugly.

For me, first drafts are about getting the nuts and bolts of the story down, beginning to end. The prose is always terrible. The dialogue, appalling. There is never any setting to speak of. The excitement of a new project ends about halfway into the first draft, and if I don’t push through that horrible last half, it’s over.

I’m 2-1/2 scenes from finishing. This draft will end up about 15K, and then it will go to my group. Hopefully I’ll have some time to do a second draft this summer (research, setting, subplots) before the edits for Porcelain Dog come down from BSB. The third draft will be fun: picking and polishing and making it pretty.

But first I have to push through the last part of this ugly, nasty SFD.